Why swarms and structures are important

Over the years, I have spent a fair amount of my time investigating the enablers behind what I call “swarmish” structures. A “swarm” is a more-decentralized-than-not organization that nonetheless has the ability to affect significant change, to realize a vision, to mobilize people to get something done. YWAM, Wycliffe and WEC are all examples of swarms. (Although the Southern Baptist Convention is a swarm, its International Mission Board, somewhat ironically, is less so.)

Structures are important because they are basically descriptions of the ways in which humans work together for a common cause. There’s an old proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” How we choose to walk together is important: whatever structure we choose will help define where we are going, how we are traveling, who we are going with, how we are going to take care of each other and stay together, how we are going to keep ourselves safe, and when the journey is going to be done.

The “swarmishness” of organizations have waxed and waned over the years. Paul’s missionary bands were very autonomous. William Carey’s work in India was, insofar as I know, equally independent owing to the distance from its London headquarters (and the lack of Internet at the time).

In recent years, as travel and communications costs dropped, organizations were able to centralize more and more, and directly control geographically distant operations from a centralized location. One example of the dangers of this was the idea of a war being micromanaged from political centers of power. However, at the same time, as travel and communications costs dropped yet further, and “amateurized” into the hands of the grassroots, more “loose structures” became possible. People figured out how to use these tools to work together to achieve common aims.

In terms of Protestant missions, in the past two centuries we’ve had two kinds of mission agencies (speaking in broad terms): the large structures (e.g. the mission boards, denominational agencies and the like), and the small “mom-and-pops” as I call them. The latter are charitable organizations founded by a single individual (or couple) for a single purpose, and never intended to send large numbers of workers. If big organizations are like Walmart, these are like the neighborhood store.

However, the proliferation of network-enabling tools has given small groups the capacity to form larger networks with other small groups. Now we see very wide (if shallow) partnerships forming (the AD 2000 & Beyond Movement was one example). The JESUS Film is another example of a huge network of various organizations being powered by a resource. When the JESUS Film counts “showings,” those showings of the film aren’t solely by teams related to the JESUS Film and Cru (formerly Campus Crusade). Most of them are local independent evangelistic teams.

Understanding how these kinds of structures work, and how we can build better networks and partnerships, is therefore key. Although some organizations will grow large, not all will. Networks scale larger than organizations ever can; YWAM, as a swarmish network, could feasibly grow to 100,000 members, but a corporate entity like the IMB probably couldn’t. Networks can have outsized influence and capacity to act. They will form; we need to form them to be the best they can be.

Plenty of organizations (like VisionSynergy, IPA, and others) are thinking about these issues. I’m certainly not alone. We could all stand to think more about them.